Nursing history
Organizational field
Preinstitutionalization
Professional nursing

Abstract in English

This study addresses the preinstitutionalization of professional Nursing in Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, in a given organizational field. Its antecedents go back to the practice originated in the hospital and school organization forms, expressed in the discourse of agents in the health and education spheres. We carried out a social-historical study of the period from 1922 to 1938. The initial boundary is the cornerstone of the Hospital do Centenário, which constitutes the institutional environment for this study, and the final boundary its expropriation. The research is mainly based on primary sources, consulting journals and documents from important institutional collections: Santa Casa de Misericórdia in Recife, Public Archives Jordão Emerenciano, Joaquim Nabuco Foundation, National Archives, Pernambuco Public Library, National Library, Santa Gertrudes Academy, Memorial de Medicina, Academia de Medicina, São Bento de Olinda convent, Nossa Senhora das Graças Faculty of Nursing - University of Pernambuco and Department of Nursing, Federal University of Pernambuco. We also used testimonies by key informants, such as a former student in the first class group of Nossa Senhora das Graças Faculty of Nursing. The theoretical frameworks for the study were institutional theory and Pierre Bourdieu?s thinking. The findings point towards an emerging organizational field, from the perspective of the Hospital do Centenário, besides the arrival of German nurses to Recife. However, against expectations, a School for Nurses is not created, as the agents? values and beliefs were not shared across the entire study period, together with the cognitive and normative bases needed in the formation of the organizational field. The outlined context covers an interwar period, including the First and the Second Republic and the beginning of the Estado Novo. In the emerging field, the predominance of a medical health model is noticeable, with an emphasis on health education. In the formation of Nursing?s organizational field, the fight between health and education agents deserves special attention, which was visible to a wide range of schools. In this respect, the emphasis on courses for public health visitants stands out. This reveals the disputes that also existed in Public Health and in the Hospital sphere. No less important was the focus involving the Church and the State. These will dominate the struggle for the mastery of symbolic capital, defined by the power relations between two agents, which will exert a clear influence on the creation of the future School for Nurses, in 1945. In this interval, it will be the Public Health Visitants and/or Health Educators or Hygiene Educators who will act, creating and molding the bases that preceded Nursing in Recife (Pernambuco)

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